


Soulmates Never Go Out Of Fashion

by ryfkah



Category: Gyeongseong Scandal | Capital Scandal
Genre: First Meetings, Friendship, Gen, Soulmates, drinking buddies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-12
Updated: 2011-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-26 00:24:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryfkah/pseuds/ryfkah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, the story of how Cha Song Joo stopped even trying to maintain a polite straight face around Sun Woo Wan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soulmates Never Go Out Of Fashion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lightningwaltz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningwaltz/gifts).



The boy tilted his head to what was probably meant to be a devastatingly attractive angle. “Don't you think you could fall in love with me? After all, I am the greatest playboy in Seoul.” He was nineteen, and he was not, in fact, anything like the greatest playboy in Seoul; the scandal-papers had only just recently begun to take note of his name. Still, one had to admire his ambition.

Cha Song Joo did not bother to hide her amusement. “Ah, but you see, I am the greatest courtesan in Seoul,” she said lightly. “So when it comes to love, my time is, alas, too valuable to play with.”

“True,” sighed Sun Woo Wan. “With a star-crossed fate like this, we must be soulmates.”

“Undoubtedly,” agreed Cha Song Joo, straight-faced. She was twenty-two, and not yet the greatest courtesan in Seoul either, but it wouldn't take much longer now. She had only been back in Korea for six months after her years of training in Siberia; she was an expert in twelve different weapons; she had told the organization, when they sent her to Seoul, that given five minutes alone with a man she she could kill him or make him fall in love with her. It was starting to become very fashionable in Seoul to fall in love with her.

Sun Woo Wan was certainly very fashionable, but after two minutes' acquaintance it was easy to see that he considered himself far too worldly to fall in love with anybody. “I'll buy you a drink, then,” he offered, “in honor of our doomed romance.”

Someone, undoubtedly, would someday find his line of bravado seductive. She resisted the urge to ruffle his hair, like a puppy's, and let him buy her the drink before moving on to the next table. Sun Woo Wan was only a boy, but he was clearly determined to be somebody, and it was part of her mandate to become well acquainted with everybody in this city who was anybody.

 

She left the club not long after that, without thinking much more on the encounter; she had an appointment, of the secret kind. Of course there were two different kinds of secret appointments in her repertoire, and the one could be easily mistaken for the other. For example, the car following hers after the appointment ended belonged to her contact's extremely irate husband. The man was highly-placed in the Japanese government, and any suspicion of her real purpose in visiting his home would ruin a number of long-term plans.

“You shouldn't have let him follow you this far,” muttered Geun Duk, scowling at the wheel. “That was careless.”

“We agreed it was better he should think it was about a lover.” She tried not to sound irritated. Geun Duk would learn not to question her judgment in time. “Pull over here, in back of the club, and get out the other side of the car. Give him a chance to make the accusation before coming out to defend my honor.”

She threw a glittering veil around her nose and mouth to disguise her features, then stepped carefully out into the path of the following car as it pulled to a screeching halt. Her contact's husband jumped out before the engine had fully stopped and grabbed her arm – as if, she thought, scornfully, he had not even noticed she was waiting to be caught.

“What have you been doing at my house?” he demanded, shaking her wrist roughly. At least he had the good sense to keep his voice low. “What kind of a perverted woman are you?”

Cha Song Joo smiled under the scarf. “Be nice,” she murmured, “and perhaps someday she'll let you watch.”

That should be more than enough of a hit to distract from political considerations. His eyes narrowed, and his hand swung back--

“Hey, now. What kind of an unmannered oaf lifts his hand against a beautiful woman?”

Both of them turned to stare at the drawling voice. Sun Woo Wan's chin was lifted nobly in the air, his arm dramatically outstretched towards them; his violently pink scarf flapped wildly in the wind, clashing with the tipsy flush of his face.

Behind him, in the doorway, Geun Duk shrugged at her and made a 'what can you do?' kind of face.

“So it's a man this time!” snarled the official – proving once and for all, thought Cha Song Joo, that he did not know his wife in the least – and lunged at Sun Woo Wan, who swung an enthusiastic punch towards his face. It missed, but to be fair to Sun Woo Wan, it might well have connected if Cha Song Joo had not quietly stuck out her foot as the man went by and sent him sprawling to the pavement.

“Ha!” announced Sun Woo Wan. “That will teach you --” He swayed; Cha Song Joo caught his elbow and steadied him, leading him discreetly away. Geun Duk took advantage of the opportunity to descend the few stairs from the door and bang the official's head into the ground several times.

(When he woke up again, he would find himself on his own steps, with a sore head and smelling strongly of of liquor. Cha Song Joo's contact would know how to manage the situation from there. Cha Song Joo herself felt it was rather a pity that they needed the boor alive for now, but some things couldn't be helped.)

“No need,” Sun Woo Wan told her, gesturing extravagantly with his free hand, “to say thank you. I would have done it for any beautiful woman. No! For any woman. All women are beautiful!”

“Of course,” said Cha Song Joo blandly. It would perhaps be safer to leave him here without allowing him to recognize her, but she felt disinclined to abandon him just at present. His heart was at least somewhere in the vicinity of the right place, and that was rare enough in Seoul these days. With her free hand, she pushed the black scarf down from around her face. “Do you need a cab?”

“Ah! My soulmate!” said Sun Woo Wan, pleased, and then made a face. “Ah. Cab. The butler—er, no.”

Cha Song Joo interpreted this to mean that the respected head of the Sun family was not going to be pleased to find his son and heir staggering in cheerfully drunk at three in the morning.

Geun Duk wouldn't like it, but there was no harm in paying one attempted good turn back with another – and besides, he was making her laugh, and that certainly earned him something. “If you are going to be the greatest playboy in Seoul,” she murmured, “you are going to have to learn to hold your liquor. But for now I suppose we can give you the use of the spare room in the courtesan house.”

***

“You might not have made the offer so easily,” said Geun Duk to her, some mornings later, “if you knew how he was going to take advantage of it.”

“On the contrary,” said Cha Song Joo, “it was an excellent bargain.” She would be sorry to have lost an iota of the entertainment that had come her way since allowing Woo Wan to take over the spare room, and secretly she suspected Geun Duk felt rather the same way. “Besides,” she added, piously, “you know I have only myself to blame this time.”

Geun Duk snorted. “Someday he will learn not to try to match you drink for drink.”

“Oh, I hope not,” said Cha Song Joo, and swept down the hall so that she could be standing in the doorway when Woo Wan woke up. It was as amusing as she had hoped; he sat straight up, wild-eyed and muss-haired, and stabbed an accusing finger at her. “ _You_!”

“Gave up my spare room yet again so that you could have you a place to stay for the night?” She offered him her sweetest smile. “What are friends for?”

“I was going to have a place to stay for the night! _You_ made sure to get me drunk,” shouted Woo Wan – it was too early in the morning for him to remember that the fact that a courtesan had drunk him under the table might not be the best thing for his cherished playboy reputation – “before I could follow through! Eun Mo Ran --”

“. . . is the kind of fortune-hunting woman who will write you letters every day, show up unexpectedly at your office with a lunch, and have your story checked on by the police if you try to disappear from her,” said Cha Song Joo, “which is no difficulty for her because she is a spy for the Japanese. There is no need to say thank you.”

Woo Wan's sputters in response were not particularly comprehensible, which meant that she was perfectly free to interpret them as 'thank you' if she wanted. She laughed – she had some time ago given up trying to maintain a polite straight face in front of Woo Wan – and closed the door to allow him to get dressed.

Fifteen minutes later, Woo Wan, dressed in yesterday's polka-dot shirt and plaid vest, came sulking into her office to announce, without preamble, “I can get rid of my own fortune-hunting women!”

“Of course you can,” agreed Cha Song Joo, without raising her head from her accounts. She in no way doubted Woo Wan's ability to shake off a fortune-hunting woman. His ability to shake dedicated informants looking to invest the Sun family in Japanese affairs was, perhaps, more uncertain. But of course he kept his eyes blind to this; it made him at once enormously relaxing and enormously frustrating to be around.

Woo Wan, who had visibly been preparing to shout some more, found the wind rather taken out of his sails after this. But it never took him long to rally. “However! I have decided after thinking about it,” he informed her, “that Eun Mo Ran is not a woman for me. Her sense of fashion is too poor.”

Cha Song Joo refrained from remarking on the melon-yellow plaid vest. “I am sorry to hear that your romance won't work out.”

“You're going to be at the club tonight?”

She lifted her eyes at this. “Should I be?”

“Yes! You owe me!”

“Don't you have that in reverse? Geun Duk has been saying I should start charging you rent.”

Woo Wan ignored this, magnificently. “You owe me the recovery of my reputation, and I expect you to be there to back me up!” he informed her, and stalked off.

She came, of course, to the club that evening, by which point Woo Wan had changed into a forest green suit jacket and regained his usual cheer. The two things were probably connected; Woo Wan must have enough sense to realize that melon-yellow was at least a month out of fashion. Of course, one of the friends at his table seemed to be wearing hot pink from head to toe, so perhaps there was only so much sense one could grant to the young.

“Diva!” Woo Wan called out, waving her over to his table.

Cha Song Joo took her time making her apologies to the couple she had been greeting, and then slowly picked her way through the crowd, thoroughly aware of the eyes turning to watch her. The drape of her red silk dress was not at all fashionable, or rather, could not have been called fashionable before tonight, but its asymmetry drew the eye like a magnet and she fully expected to see imitators within the month. If she was going to be there to suit some whim of Woo Wan's, she was certainly going to make sure the evening suited her purposes as well.

“I hope you're enjoying the music tonight,” she said by way of greeting. It wasn't her music, and it wasn't her club, but the goal was to make it so much her own that nobody would be able to remember this.

“I wanted you to meet Kim Yeung Nan and Shin Se Gi,” said Woo Wan, expansively. Cha Song Joo nodded graciously at his companions, who had all the signs of being starstruck with Cha Song Joo's presence. “I was just telling them about how we met, wasn't I, Se Gi?”

Cha Song Joo raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“It must have been wonderful to see,” said the girl earnestly. “The way Woo Wan took down those two men – I would have been so frightened, but he says you never even trembled!”

Slowly, Cha Song Joo raised the other eyebrow.

Woo Wan grinned back at her, utterly shameless. “Isn't that how we discovered our destiny as soulmates?”

There was more than enough that made her laugh in Seoul these days, but most of it was the cold kind of laughter she'd learned in Siberia. She'd rebuilt herself on that kind of laughter, but it could deaden you more than tears could.

Laughter warmed her stomach now, with nothing bitter in it. For that, she did owe him a kindness. “Our Woo Wan is too modest,” she sighed, lowing her lashes. “Two men? There were three at least, although I believe one ran away of fright in the middle of the incident.”

“Three men!” squeaked Se Gi, and then coughed, spluttered, and added manfully, “That's our Wan, of course.”

 _Thank you_ , mouthed Woo Wan across the table at her, and Cha Song Joo smiled again and gave a near-invisible shrug – it was nothing; what were friends for?


End file.
